The British head of Sri Lankan Airlines faces dismissal after the national carrier refused to bump passengers off a flight from London to make way for the President of Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan Government, which owns 51 per cent of the airline, said yesterday that it was cancelling a work permit for Peter Hill, who has been the carrier’s chief executive, based in Colombo, for eight years. It cited the airline’s refusal to clear 35 seats for Mahinda Rajapaksa and his entourage on a flight from London via the Maldives to Colombo on December 13.

Mr Rajapaksa, accompanied by his wife and several aides, had been on a private visit to Britain to watch his son, Yoshitha, passing out from the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. The President eventually returned to Colombo on December 14 on a charter flight with Mihin Air, a budget carrier that was set up this year and is wholly owned by the Sri Lankan Government.

Opponents of Mr Rajapaksa say that the incident illustrates the increasingly autocratic and arbitrary behaviour of the President, who won an election in 2005 promising a harder line against the rebel Tamil Tigers. Since then he has made himself head of the ruling party, the Commander-in-Chief and the Minister of Finance and of Defence, and he has allocated a ministry to each of his three brothers.

The Rajapaksa brothers control more than 70 per cent of the Sri Lanka budget, according to local economists. “Put it this way: it’s getting pretty hard to say no to the President,” one Western diplomat said.

The Government says that it requested the seats in advance and that the airline promised that they would be made available. “We have recommended the cancellation of a work permit issued to Peter Hill,” Dhammika Perera, chairman of the Government’s Board of Investment, said. “They said they have enough seats . . . and finally when the day comes, they said there were no seats for the delegation.”

The airline, however, said that it turned down the request because its flight was fully booked, mostly by tourists spending their Christmas holidays in Sri Lanka or the Maldives.

“They made a request for 35 seats, presumably at short notice, but the flight was full, unfortunately,” Chandana de Silva, an airline spokesman, said. “If the Government, as the majority shareholder, had officially directed Sri Lankan Airlines, it would have been different. For something like this, the CEO would have to make the call.”

Mr de Silva said that he had seen the announcement by the Board of Investment chief on television, but the airline had yet to receive any official communication about Mr Hill’s work permit.

He also suggested that the move could be linked to the negotiations with Emirates, the Dubai national carrier, which owns 43.6 per cent of Sri Lankan Airlines and has managed it under contract since 1998. Mr Hill used to work for Emirates and was appointed by it to lead Sri Lankan Airlines.

The Emirates management contract expires at the end of March, but talks on renewing it, which are scheduled to resume next month, have been inconclusive so far. Local media say that the Government wanted a bigger management role and believed that the existing contract is tilted in favour of Emirates financially.

Mr Hill has said that the talks have been dragging on for too long. “The negotiations between the Government and Emirates have been going on for 18 months. I would have liked to have seen them resolved by now,” he told reporters in Delhi last month.

Mr Hill has also put blame for a recent fall in profits on the growth in Sri Lanka’s separatist conflict, which he says has put off many tourists.

Strained relations

— Jacques Chirac was accused during his French presidency of using his influence to obtain free flights from Air France and the budget carrier Euralair for himself and his family and friends

— In July 2001 Tony Blair announced that he and his family would fly to southwest France with Easyjet, who based an advertising campaign around his choice. He then chose Ryanair, a rival airline

— Europe was scandalised when Prince Aarge, a member of the Danish Royal Family, was forced by the Germans to ride across Europe on a cattle truck at the start of the First World War. He was then arrested by Germans on suspicion of being a French spy and strip-searched before proving his innocence

— The Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was refused entry to Nigeria by security officials when his plane landed with 200 members of his heavily armed, all-female guard. The Nigerian President intervened to smooth over the difficulties

Sources: Times archives, The New York Times, agencies

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